


Craft (The Collection Remix)

by SathInflection



Category: Religion & Lore - Ambiguous Fandom
Genre: 19th Century, Dolls, Gen, Magic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-23
Updated: 2018-09-23
Packaged: 2019-07-02 04:40:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,008
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15789147
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SathInflection/pseuds/SathInflection
Summary: A young girl fails at a burial, because she learns how to raise the dead.





	Craft (The Collection Remix)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Night-Mare (Aoife)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aoife/gifts).
  * Inspired by [Poppets](https://archiveofourown.org/works/3122072) by [Night-Mare (Aoife)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aoife/pseuds/Night-Mare). 



She’d gone to the shore looking for treasure. She hadn’t found any yet, but treasure was the sort of thing you only had to find once in your life. On that day, she found a dead man instead.

His skin was ghastly pale, showing swollen blue veins over skin stretched tight. Her first thought was that maybe the resurrectionists Burke and Hare had lost a body, somewhere in the ocean, but Burke’d been hanged back in 1829. It was more likely that the man was a sailor, or a fisherman, who’d died at sea.

Her first thought was to tell her mother. But she would probably shout and cry and go on about how a child oughtn’t to be wandering the shore on her own, particularly when she was supposed to be fetching some salt. So there would be no telling her mother, which left her with a body to deal with.

When her cousin had died at sea, her family had buried a doll in his place. Should she bury a doll for him, though he was right in front of her? A man ought to get a burial, and he was too big for her to do it herself. Carefully, she took her little knife and cut some strips of sodden cloth from his shirt, before heading to the lee side of the nearest hill.

She gathered up some twigs, looking for ones flexible enough to make into a poppet. Using her knife as much as her hands, she formed a little skeleton out of wood. Then she wrapped the dead man’s linen around the shape, giving the poppet a shirt and trousers. As for the head, she fastened a thistle to the top, so it would have petals for hair.

The wind found her again as she climbed the hill, looking for somewhere to bury him. At last she found a crevice between two rocks that would serve well enough for a grave and patted some dirt over it. She mumbled some prayers, switching between a few, just to be sure he got all the good ones.

Did she see something moving on the shore? Had the man… moved? He was surely dead; he’d stank, after all. But still, thinking better of burying it, she took the poppet from under the dirt and stuffed it in a pocket.

Though there was nothing to worry about, she still walked faster on the way home.

* * *

A few days later, she was upset to find out that a miracle had occurred. A fisherman thought drowned at sea had appeared at his widow’s door. He wasn’t fully possessed of his senses, but he recognized his family and could speak a few words. When she timidly snuck a look at the man that Sunday in church, her blood went cold.

He was her drowned sailor. He _had_ been moving on the shore—but how? Was it the poppet, brought him back to life again? The poppet was sitting by her bedside, though the thistle was starting to wilt. Now that she looked at it, it reminded her a bit of how the man held his head, tilted as if he were boneless.

She ought to replace the poppet’s head anyway. This time, she took a bit of rag and stuffed it with straw, giving the poppet a more permanent head. She even took a bit of charcoal and gave it eyes and a mouth, just in case that helped. Pleased with her work, she put the poppet back on the shelf, and waited impatiently for tomorrow.

* * *

The drowned man was talking again, as if he’d never been injured. But the second miracle only took up a little of the gossip, for there was news of a robber who’d attacked an entire family on the road to Edinburgh, leaving only one of the children alive.

He would be perfect for a test of her powers. And who could be upset with her for bringing in a criminal of the worst sort?  

She gathered more wood for a second time. The frame of his poppet had to be stronger, but she had got better at selecting wood that would bend without breaking. Cloth had become a bit of a problem—her mother would take notice if too many rags went missing—but she’d begged a few scraps off a seamstress after helping her with some cleaning. She had enough to give the poppet a red coat, like a soldier’s.

Tying the poppet to the highwayman was harder. She had no idea what he looked like, or his name. But she thought of an awful man as she constructed the poppet and recited the highwayman’s crimes to it. Perhaps the poppet would learn who it was.

There was life in the poppet now—it felt different than her drowned man’s. He was a good person, after all. The highwayman’s poppet made her fingers tingle if she held onto it for too long. She worried, for a moment, that perhaps she was trifling with something she oughtn’t.

Ignoring the feeling in her fingers, she took the poppet to the police station. An officer smiled as she thrust the poppet towards him.

“Please arrest this man,” she said.

The man laughed, but he did as she asked. He pretended to arrest the poppet, told him he was very bad, and gave him back to her. She thanked him and returned home to put the highwayman’s poppet on the shelf by the drowned man’s.

She could barely fall asleep for anticipation. When the rising sun woke her up, she saw that the highwayman’s poppet had fallen on the floor. Its neck was bent, and the head lolled back when she picked it up. She dressed quickly and rushed outside to the street, hoping to hear of the highwayman’s fate.

“It’s so strange,” a woman whispered to her neighbor. “The man just walked into the police station and asked to be arrested. They hung him that very night!”

She grinned.

But now… who should she make next?

**Author's Note:**

> I was inspired by this news story, about little coffins found near Edinburgh: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/edinburghs-mysterious-miniature-coffins-22371426/


End file.
